The Night Sister by Jennifer McMahon

★★★★ 1/2

Burntown by Jennifer McMahon

★★★★ 1/2

Sharp Object by Gillian Flynn (audio)

★★★★

"The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you."

Another quick-paced and suspenseful novel from Gillian Flynn.  Filled with interest twists and one dark story after another, this story explores shocking family relationships and flawed characters.

Every Fifteen Minutes by Lisa Scottoline

★★★★

"I've read that one out of twenty-four people is a sociopath, and if you ask me, the other twenty-three of you should be worried."

This is the first novel that I have read by best-selling author Lisa Scottoline.  Dr. Eric Parish is the Chief of the Psychiatric Unit at a hospital.  He has always had his life under control, but recently things are beginning to fall apart.  Eric is in the middle of a divorce and a custody battle for his seven-year-old daughter, he was accused of sexual harrassment at work, and he is worried about his new patient, seventeen year old Max.  He is being targeted by a dangerous sociopath - and all of these things may just be related.  This was an engaging thriller.  It was a bit too unrealistic and everything came together in too neat of a bow at end end, but I generally enjoyed the book and am looking forward to reading more by this author.  It was a good change from what I normally read and I did not see the ending coming - at all.

The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon

★★★★ 1/2

"Madness is a wonderful excuse, don't you think?"

When Ruthie's most mysteriously disappears, she and her sister must find a way to get her back.  In doing so, they discover the hidden diary of Sara Harrison Shea from over a century ago - and they suddenly find themselves in a modern-day ghost story of their own.

Part history/thriller/horror/mystery - this novel has everything needed for wonderfully engrossing page-turner that I couldn't put down.  Luckily my husband was up north hunting all weekend and my daughter went to bed early so I was able to stay up way-to-late finishing it!  The writing was beautiful and brilliant and I loved the historical aspects.  And it completely freaked me out more than a couple of times.  There goes my dream of wanting to live in the middle of the woods. Eh.

This book was #8 on my top ten list of 2015.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

★★★★

"The holes in your life are permanent.  You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mould yourself through the gaps."

Rachel is in her late twenties and her life has taken a turn for the worst.  Recently divorced, she has taken to heavy drinking and now lives with an old friend from college.  Rachel lost her job, but still takes the train into the city everyday so that her roommate won’t know that she is out of work.  Everyday, she takes the same train route and sees “Jess and Jason” having breakfast on their porch.  Rachel has made up names for the couple and sees them as having the “perfect life.”  Only a few doors down lives her ex-husband, Tom, with his new wife and daughter.  One day, Rachel sees “Jess” kissing a man on her porch that isn’t her husband and it is soon reported that she has gone missing.  Rachel soon learns that “Jess and Jason” are really Megan and Scott.  Wanting to help the police find Megan, she reports what she saw and finds herself suddenly involved with their lives.   

            As the search for Megan continues, flashbacks show that her life and marriage to Scott were not as perfect as them seemed.  Tom’s wife Anna also plays a part in the story when the police find out that Megan had previously helped out with babysitting their daughter.  Rachel learns that the lives of herself and the other two women are more connected than she had realized.  When Megan turns up dead, Rachel is determined to help Scott figure out who the murder is.  The more tangled up that Rachel gets in the investigation, the more secrets she learns about Megan’s past life.  But, Rachel’s drinking problem often causes her to forget things and she is far from a reliable source.  She may know something about the murder, but the police (and readers) question whether or not they can trust her.

I really enjoyed this book and couldn’t put it down.  It had a rapid and intriguing storyline that kept my interest until the very last page.  Many reviews that I read of the book stated that the book was the “new Gone Girl.”  I read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn a few years ago and would have to agree: both books were compelling, suspenseful, and had wonderfully written characters that I hated and loved at the same time.  My only concern with the book (and the reason I gave it four stars out of five) was that the three voices of Rachel, Megan, and Anna felt too similar to me.  I sometimes found myself forgetting which narrator I was reading because they seemed too alike.

The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy

★★★

"Being a victim is more palatable than having to recognize the intrinsic contradictions of one's own governing philosophy."

My thriller book for LIS 642 - Reading Interests of Adutls

The Hunt for Red October is a military Technothriller dealing with tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It is the first of thirteen novels centering around the main character of Jack Ryan.  The novel opens with Marko Ramius, a submarine commander in the Soviet Navy.  Ramius has had enough of Soviet politics and plans to defect to the United States with his officers aboard the Red October, a nuclear Russian submarine.  Meanwhile, Jack Ryan, a analyst for the CIA, travels to Virginia to deliver classified photographs of the submarine.  After receiving information from various other ships, Ryan quickly figures out Ramius’s plan and he finds himself caught up in an International chase to keep the Red October from the Soviet fleet.  After convincing the military of the situation, he boards the submarine with a British officer named Owen Williams.  Ramius fakes a malfunction of the submarine’s reactor in order to allow the crew to be rescued by the United States Navy.  He and his officers remain behind while a different submarine is blown up to make it look like the Red October was destroyed.  Many of the Soviets are convinced of this, but Igor Loginov, a cook and spy on the Red October is aware of Ramius’s plan and tries to blow up the ship.  Ryan ends up having to kill Loginov to stop him after Ramius and Williams are severely wounded.  Just when the danger is believed to be over, Captain Viktor Tupolev, a former student of Ramius, recognizes the he Red October and discovers that it was not the submarine that they thought to have been destroyed.  Tupolev’s submarine is eventually destroyed and the Red October arrives safely in Virginia.  Ramius and his crew are taken by the CIA to begin their new lives in American and Ryan flies back to his home in London.

Not being very familiar with the Thriller genre, it took me awhile to select a book.  I wanted to read something that I normally wouldn’t have picked up on my own and Tom Clancy has always been an author that I’ve heard a lot about but haven’t read myself.  Before his death in 2013, I remember his books always being on the top of the bestseller lists.  I chose to read The Hunt for Red October not only because it was the first of Clancy’s books written about Jack Ryan, but also for it’s reputation for it’s accuracy of military submarines and warfare.  

This book was hard for me to get through.  I tend to read books that have a lot of background information and character development and The Hunt for Red October was mostly based on action, as most Thrillers are.  It also included a lot of details that I wasn’t really interested in about submarines and the United States and Soviet military history.  The author frequently went back and forth between different characters and ships during much of the novel.  This did a great job of keeping the action going, but it left me having trouble keeping all of the plot lines and characters straight.  I’m a very visual learner so I kept having to take notes and draw diagrams to make sure I knew what was happening.  The book was very descriptive of military warfare and seemed to be very well-researched.  Even though I didn’t really enjoy reading it, I appreciated the novel for these aspects and would recommend the book to someone who likes reading thrillers or is interested in military history.

The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian (audio)

★★★ 1/2

"My mother used to talk about passages and, once and awhile, about ordeals.  We all have them; we are all shaped by them.  She thought the key to find the healing in the hurt."

This is the second book I've read by Chris Bohjalian (the other one was The Sandcastle Girls).  I really like his writing style and characters.  Plus my local library has a lot of his books on playaway!!!

The Night Stranger was pretty good.  After a devastating plane crash that kills 39 people, the pilot Chip relocated his wife Emily and twin daughters to New Hampshire.  The old Victorian house that they move into holds many secrets - a door bolted shut in the basement and stories of a young boy committing suicide years before - the family is for more then they bargained for.  The story gets stranger as Chip meets some of the dead passengers from the plane crash in his basement and the herbalist neighbors begin to take a strong and almost obsessive interest in the twin girls.  This modern-day ghost story is full of town secrets and and the strange people that live there.

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (audio)

★★★★

"Meaning that history is always written by the winners.  When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books - books which glorify their own cause and siparage that conquered foe.  As Napoleon once said, 'What is history, but a fable agreed upon?'...The Sangreal documents simply tell the other side of the Christ story.  In the end, which side of the story you believe becomes a matter of faith, and personal exploration, but at least the information has survived."

By looking at the reviews on goodreads and amazon, everyone either seemed to love or hate this book.  I wouldn't say that this was one of the best books I've ever read, but I did enjoy it.  There was a lot going, and some parts got a little confusing, but that might have been because I was listening to it instead of actually reading the book.  I first watched the movie when it came out in 2006 (wow that seems like so long ago!!!) and the book has been sitting on my bookshelf ever since.  Glad I finally got the chance to read...or I guess I should say "listen" to it!

The novel tells the a contemporary story of the famous search for the "Holy Grail."  While lecturing in Paris, the symbologist Robert Langdon becomes involved with the murder of a famous curator at the Louvre.  Shortly before his death, he left a secret message to his grand-dauther, Sophie Neveu.  When Robert is accused of the murder, he and Sophie begin a chase across France to find out the truth about the death of Sophie's grand-father.  They quickly discover that the clues reveal the truth about a two-hundred year old mystery - and about the involvement of Sophie's family.

There were a lot of things that I really liked about this book:

     1.) Historical information - Throughout the story, are all kinds of facts about Western history and religion including Da Vinci's paintings, the legend of the holy grail, the portrayal of women, and Christianity.  I'm not sure how much was fact and how much was Brown's interpretation, but I enjoyed it none the less.

     2.) Paris - The novel was mostly set in Paris and the author used the scenery and well-known places throughout the book.  I spent two weeks in Paris a couple years ago, so it was really neat to remember all of the places the were mentioned in the book.  My aunt and cousins went right after right after the movie came out.  They not only saw it at a theater in Paris, but traced the route that Robert and Sophie took...it turned out to be a really awesome scrapbook page!!

     3.) Information literacy - This is going to sound really dorky, but I LOVED all of the research that was incorporate into the novel.  My favorite part was when Robert and Sophie visit the curator of a religious museum and search for articles in a database that will lead then to a tomb where a key item in solving the mystery of the holy grail is hidden.  I was super excited that they used actual research terminology like keywords, truncations, and proximity searching!!!

Definitely worth reading!

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

★★★★ 1/2

"I was not a lovable child, and I'd grown up to be a deeply unloveable adult.  Draw a picture of my soul, and it'd be a scribble of frogs."

I don't normally read crime/thriller novels, but after finishing this book, I may need to read a few more!! The book caught my interest from the very beginning and I couldn't put it done.  I read "Gone Girl" a couple a months ago and was excited that this title was on the list for a workshop that I am going to next weekend.

Libby Day was seven years old when her mother and two sisters were murdered. Libby was the only one to escaped and later testified that her 15-year-old brother Ben was the killer. Twenty-five years later, Libby is a troubled and lonely adult and her brother still sits in prison. The money that she was given when her family was killed is quickly running out and she is contacted by a "Kill Club" that is willing to give her money to talk to them about the murders and help prove that her brother is innocent. Left with few other options, Libby decides to meet with the club and agrees to revisit her past and the people that may have paid a part in the murders. The more she learns the more invested she becomes in not only the money, but finding out what happened the night her family was killed. As the true story begins to unravel she is suddenly finds herself in danger herself.

The novel alternates between Libby's story in the present and her mom's and Ben's the day the murders happened. I really liked that the book was set up this way...as Libby was putting the pieces together of what happened, the stories of those who were actually involved play out throughout the day of the murders. I couldn't wait to find out what happened and was really surprised by the ending. The pieces fit so perfectly together and it was an insightful and intriguing story of the affect that tragedy has on  it's victims.

This book was #7 on my top ten list of 2013.

11/22/63 by Stephen King

★★★★★

"We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why.  Not until the future eats the present, anyways.  We know when it's too late."

"For a moment everything was clear, and when that happens you see that the world is barely there at all.  Don't we all secretly know this?  It's a perfectly balanced mechanism of shouts and echoes pretending to be wheels and cogs, a dreamclock chiming beneath a mystery-glass we call life.  Behind it?  Below it and around it?  Chaos, storms.  Men with hammers, men with knives, men with guns.  Women who twist what they cannot dominate and belittle what they cannot understand.  A universe of horror and loss surrounding a single lighted state where mortals dance in defiance of the dark."

"You never knew me, but I love you, honey."

This book was amazing! I probably never would have picked it up if I hadn't been reading it from book club, but I'm so glad I did! 

Over the past two weeks I've been very obsessed with the book and when I'm really into a book I bring it every where with me. To work, to appointment, to my friend's houses...everywhere. So everyone kept asking me what I was reading. When I started raving about it and said it was Stephen King, I got a lot of the same responses: "Oh, Stephen King? He writes all those creepy horror novels. Those freak me out." I've only read the first three dark tower novels, so I can't judge, but this is NOT a horror book! Suspense-thriller, maybe. Mystery, yes. A novel about time travel, definitely. Historical fiction, absolutely. And a love story, yep it's got that too! And dancing. There's a lot of dancing.

The basic premise of the novel is a teacher named Jack Epping who travels through time to 1958 where he tries to stop the John F. Kennedy assassination. But changing the past is a lot hard then he thinks. And to top it off, he realizes that he really likes living in the late 1950s / early 1960s. And, of course, he falls in love.

I haven't read too much about this time period, or the assassination for that matter, so I really enjoyed King's perspective of this important time in America's past. I read a book review that I think sums it up quite nicely: "As a book, it is incredible. Once again King takes us back to the late 50's in a way no one else seems to be able to do. The stark difference between that time and ours is almost like reading a fairy tale or ancient history."

This book was #1 on my top ten list of 2013.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

★★★★

"There's something disturbing about recalling a memory and feeling utterly cold."

Wow, that only took me ... what, 5 days??  Good thing I was on vacation from both work and school otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get anything else done :)  I don't think I've ever loved a book and hated the main characters so much at the same time.  Crazy ending ... Has anyone else read anything by her???  

Room by Emma Donoghue

★★★★

"In the world I notice persons are nearly always stressed and have no time...I don't know how persons with jobs do the jobs and all the living as well...I guess the time gets spread very thin like butter all over the world, the roads and houses and playgrounds and stores, so there's only a little smear or time on each place, then everyone has to hurry on to the next bit."

Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson

★★★★★

"What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories?"

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

★★★★

"Such things happen."

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

★★★

"I've had many enemies over the years.  If there's one thing I've learned, it's never engage in a fight you're sure to lose.  On the other hand, never let anyone who has insulted you get away with it.  Bide your time and strike back when you're in a position of strength-even if you no longer need to strike back."